


how light carries on endlessly, even after death

by good_ho_mens



Series: Love, Not Loved [2]
Category: Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: Bart Allen is a BABY, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Cassie Sandsmark Is A Good Friend, Funerals, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Sad Ending, Tim Drake is a Good Friend, all jokes aside this was rlly fun to write, also pls dont try and understand the timeline for this it doesnt make sense, bruh this legit made me cry, i know this isnt how it went in canon but i hate public funerals so f that, its all of them ig????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/good_ho_mens/pseuds/good_ho_mens
Summary: “He loved us, you know?” Cassie pauses, lifting her hands and then dropping them again, “I mean, we loved him, of course we did, but Bart...““Something about being all he had, right?”“Yeah, something like that.”In the distance, thunder rumbles.It doesn’t rain.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Cassie Sandsmark
Series: Love, Not Loved [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2016593
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71





	how light carries on endlessly, even after death

Tim doesn’t want to get out of the car.

He glances up, and Bruce is smiling at him sadly from the driver's seat. Alfred isn’t here this time. There’s no house to clean, or mother’s or father’s to comfort. There’s just a stretch of short cropped grass and a sad little group of no more than ten people, and a gravestone without a date.

Damian isn’t here this time, either. Bart didn’t have a little brother. He still offered to come, so did Dick and Cass, even Duke and Jason (he’s pretty sure, at least. Jason passed him in the hall and held up a black tie, and when Tim shook his head he just shrugged and went back to whatever it is he was doing before). Stephanie didn’t, and Tim is grateful for it. She squeezed his hand before he left and he knew she understood.

He needs to do this one on his own.

Well, on his own plus Bruce. He couldn’t talk him out of coming.

He really doesn’t want to get out of the car.

Bruce unbuckles his seatbelt and opens his door, catching Tim’s eye with a stern look. “Take as long as you need.”

He shuts the door behind him as he climbs out, trudging over to the group and shaking hands with Jay. Tim wonders how mad he’d be if he hot wired the car and drove back to Gotham without him. Probably not very mad.

A red sudan pulls up, and out steps one very tired Cassie Sandsmark.

Tim gets out of the car.

They meet halfway, and Cassie shuffles her feet, her keys dangling in her hand. “We should really stop meeting like this.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, but the truth in the words hang heavy.

Cassie holds out an arm, and Tim tucks himself under it, wrapping his around her waist. They start to walk, timing their steps to each other because it's a habit. They used to do it, all four of them, walking in a row of linked arms, trying not to fall over.

It’s hard not to trip now, too, but for a completely different reason.

The circle of mourners make room for them, stepping back and leaving a gap. Cassie pulls out of Tim’s hold to hug Joan, and Jay claps him on the back. Tim smiles at him, a little apologetically. “Thanks for doing this.”

“Of course,” Jay says. “When we found out you kids couldn’t make the funeral-- well, it just wasn’t right.”

“No,” Cassie agrees, “it wasn’t.”

Barry, who’s got one arm around Iris and the other tucked into his pocket, nods to Tim. “He wanted you to have his ring, I’ll grab it from my car--”

“Barry,” Bruce interrupts, holding his hand out. “I’ve got it.”

Pressing the keys into his hand, Barry smiles tightly, “Thanks.”

As Bruce walks away, they go quiet again. Tim looks at the sky, and it’s gray, but not dark enough to really threaten any rain. Half between familiar and abnormal. Fitting.

Iris smiles at them all, and there are dark circles under her eyes. Tim wonders what it’s like to lose your grandson years before he’s even born.

“It’s good that you’re here, now,” She says. “That’s what matters.”

Tim can’t help but stare at her as she reaches out to tuck Cassie’s hair behind her ear, and wipe a stray tear from her cheek. Once again he tries to imagine what it would be like, to have a mother who cared about more than money and image and fossils that had been dead for years instead of the perfectly alive son right in front of her.

He used to joke that his mother would care more about him in two hundred years when he’s a brittle skeleton than she ever did when he was alive.

Iris wasn’t Barry’s mom, and neither was Joan, but they were both pretty damn close, and it’s more than Tim ever got.

He shakes his head slightly when Iris knocks her knuckles under his chin.

“Thank you,” He says.

At some point, just as Bruce comes back, Cassie takes his hand.

The small bag Bruce is carrying holds more than just a ring, and Barry reaches in and pulls out Bart’s red goggles, passing them to Cassie. “He uh- he always used to talk about getting you your own pair, for flying.”

Cassie takes them gingerly, brushing her thumb across the lens. “He was always worried something would fly into my eyes and blind me, and I’d crash.”

“It did happen a few times,” Tim teases, nudging her. It’s empty, and so is the smile she gives him.

Barry passes him the ring, and for a moment, it looks like he doesn’t want to let go. 

“He trusted you more than he trusted us.”

“Barry,” Wally warns.

“It’s not a criticism or a-- I don’t know. I’m not angry.” Barry sighs and leans into Iris as she wraps an arm around him, finally giving Tim the ring. “I’m just glad, I guess. That he had someone.”

When Tim touches it, it sends a small shock through his fingers. He stares down at the ring, pulling his finger away and tapping it, hoping it will happen again. As absurd as it sounds, he knows Bart’s shocks, and that was his.

Wally clears his throat, “This is everyone, right?”

Cassie breath hitches, and Tim tugs his eyes away from the ring to frown at their group. The Garrick’s, Iris and Wally, Bart and Bruce. Him and Cassie. That’s all? He opens his mouth to ask about Kon and then snaps it shut so hard his jaw pops.

Right.

He pockets the ring. When he gets home it will go on his nightstand, next to Kon’s glasses.

Cassie holds his elbow with both hands as they walk behind the rest of the group towards the grave plot, Bart’s goggles propped on the top of her head, making her blonde hair look even brighter.

The grass sludges under their feet, and taking a glance at the sky again, Tim realizes it already did rain, just an hour or two too early.

The gravestone is already up. It’s expensive, and Tim can guess who paid for it.

_ “Bart Allen,” _ It says, _ “Loved.” _

No date, no cheesy quote, just his name, and a statement. He lifts the arm Cassie isn’t holding to press his hand over the back of hers.

Wally laughs wetly, “We didn’t know what to put. His birth and-- and death date don’t really add up.”

“There were too many words to say,” Joan says, and her voice is hoarse, “so we summed it up with one.”

“It’s perfect,” Cassie tells them.

Their group stands still for a few more minutes, and Tim pointedly ignores the fresh dirt in front of the stone. He clears his throat. “How many?”

It only takes a few seconds for Jay to understand that he’s asking about the funeral. “Just us, his old roommate, Val, some old teammates from the Titans and a few from Young Justice. Cissie and… Anna?”

“Anita,” Cassie corrects quietly. “Greta?”

Iris frowns, “There was a quiet girl, in the back. That might have been her.”

“Too bad Slobo missed it,” Cassie says, and it’s just for him.

Tim manages a snort, “No, it’s really not. He would’ve destroyed half the graves here.”

A memory tugs at the edge of his mind, a sleepover, near the end of their time as a consistent team. Anita asked them all how they wanted to be buried, and they’d all replied with cremation or burials, sent adrift in space --Slobo, obviously-- even burned at the pire, half as a joke. Bart had just gone uncharacteristically quiet, and then said, “By the people I love.”

Tim and Cassie were off-world when it happened for real. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for that.

After a few more moments, Jay clears his throat. “I didn’t give much of a speech, last time--”

“You did fine, Jay,” Wally interrupts. 

“I appreciate that, Wally, I do, but you happen to be wrong this time,” Jay says with a sigh. “See, I talked about him, and how he was kind and loud and caring, but I never said what Bart meant to me.”

Tim holds his breath, and realizes that’s the first time anyone has said his name.

Jay clears his throat again. “He wasn’t quite a son, or a grandson, or even a nephew, I’m not sure how to explain it, but he was… well, he was my boy. Simple as that, I suppose. He was my boy, and I loved him.”

“Love,” Cassie and Tim both say without thinking.

Watching them, Jay’s face splits into a ghost of a smile. “You’re right, of course you are. I love him.”

Joan’s eyes are rimmed with tears and she reaches up to pat Jay’s cheek affectionately. 

“Oh, our lives were starting to settle down before he showed up,” She says, and then winks, “I’m glad he did.”

Wally scoffs. “He was a pain in my ass. Reminded me of myself, back in the day. There were only two things I could never match him for.”

“Humor and cuteness,” Barry says sagely.

Shoving him lightly, Wally rolls his eyes. “No. His  _ appetite, _ kid could eat a whole pizzeria out of business, and... his heart.”

“I’m of the firm belief no one’s is bigger,” Joan says.

Tim’s eyes sting and he blinks rapidly, dropping his gaze to the ground and the freshly turned dirt. Bruce’s arm finds his shoulder, his hand reaching up to rest against the back of Tim’s head. Between him and Cassie, Tim is pretty sure he won’t completely collapse if he keeps listening.

“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, really, when your future grandson shows up at your door, traumatized by whatever life he left behind-- or ahead, I guess.” Barry furrows his eyebrows, “I think I spent so much time agonizing over the future I was sending my newborn son into to pay much attention to Bart. That’s on me.”

“And me,” Iris says, pressing her hand against his chest.

“I did love him, though.” Barry glances up at Tim, and then Cassie. “I do love him.”

Tim looks around, and he knows that this isn’t a funeral, there’s no scheduled speaker or time frame. It’s just Bart’s family, going in a circle to talk about the kid they all love. He knows that means he should talk, now, but the words get stuck in his throat. Helplessly, he looks up to Bruce.

His father just smiles back. “The first time Bart came to the house, without permission, by the way, he was looking for you. He wanted to tell you about a… movie, I think, that he went to.”

“A play,” Cassie says. “We went together. I guess it’s the first time he’d ever been.”

“I could tell. Anyway, he was looking for you, and I told him where your room was --he would have found it eventually even if I hadn’t-- but you were asleep, for once, and I was worried he’d wake you up.” Bruce turns to the group, something in his eyes as he locks them with Barry’s. “When I went to check on the two of them, Bart was sitting on the foot of Tim’s bed, his feet in his lap while he fiddled with some sort of puzzle. Tim was still fast asleep. Bart actually hushed me.”

“Bart hushed the  _ Batman?” _ Wally asks, and then shakes his head. “Actually, that tracks.”

“I didn’t worry about Bart coming to the house whenever he wanted, after that.”

Tim gapes at Bruce, eyes wide. Sure, he remembers that day. He remembers waking up to Bart curled up next to him like a cat, snoring. He remembers the tangent he went on about plays when he woke up, the excitement in his eyes. He just never really tied Bruce into the picture.

“When my mom asked me about my team, in that first month, I tried to be professional, I really did,” Cassie starts, tucking one of her hands into her pocket. “But all I could talk about was how infuriating Kon was, with his greater than thou shtick that he had back then.”

Tim snorts, “He was the worst.”

Cassie pokes his side, “I complained about you, too. How you were the smartest of all of us, which would be useful if you weren’t such an  _ ass.” _

“Rude.”

“True,” Cassie corrects, and then her smile softens, “But Bart… well, I did mention that he was loud, but mostly I just talked about how he was adorable, like a walking smile. The kid could make me laugh no matter how sour of a mood I was in. He was always like that. Just…”

“Good,” Tim finishes, and Cassie nods.

“Oh, he was,” Jay says, sounding far away.

Tim, finally, finds his voice. “One time, I think it was last year, a few months before… before we lost Kon. I hadn’t seen any of the team in weeks, I hadn’t even been outside of Gotham in weeks. Bart just showed up, one day. I went up to my room to grab a file and he was just sitting on my bed. I have no idea how he kept getting past security.”

“I can say with almost certainty that Alfred lets it slide,” Bruce says.

“Yeah. He probably does. Anyhow-- Bart told me that we were going on a trip, and I was like “no, we’re not, I have responsibilities” and he said “and I have your over excited older brother on speed dial”. Which was valid blackmail, honestly. Dick is always trying to get me to take more time off.”

Cassie’s eyebrows are furrowed, like she’s trying to figure out what Bart story he’s telling. After a few seconds they widen again. “Is this the one about the movie premier?”

“Specifically, Cissie’s movie premier. She landed a role in this big time medieval film, as an elf, obviously, and Bart somehow got his hands on four tickets to the original red carpet showing.” Tim waves a hand, “At this point, we’re all hopelessly in love with Cissie, and the idea of crashing her celebrity party in trashy disguises was a no brainer.”

“There was a lot of shiny fabric and glitter involved,” Cassie says as the adults laugh. She smiles at the memory. “Bart insisted we all wear super fancy clothes, like, Billy Porter level stuff.”

“Which I paid for, obviously,” Tim says while he rolls his eyes. “Cassie had this really beautiful red dress, and insisted on wearing converse and a jean jacket with it.”

“Plenty of people complimented me,” Cassie tells Iris defiantly. “Besides, it was nothing compared to Kon. You know those over exaggerated eighties suits with the frilly shirts? Imagine that times four, with knee high combat boots and hair from Grease.” 

Tim shakes his head, “He was so proud of that suit.”

“What did you wear?” Wally asks Tim, fully immersed in the story now.

Cassie gasps as Tim groans. She smacks her forehead. “God, Tim’s suit. You know those moments in movies where you’re like “the only purpose of this scene was to make us feel very attracted to this character”?”

“Shut  _ up, _ Cassie.” 

“No, no, it looked like a galaxy. Like, dark blue, velvet stars, gold trim, the whole thing. We all half expected him to be lame and wear a plain tux but he looked  _ hot.” _

_ “Oh my god.” _

“Everyone said so!”

“The premier?” Iris nudges gently.

Tim points at her in appreciation. “Yeah, yeah. So Bart, after dragging me out of the manor in my pjs and through like, eighteen different tailors, sits me down at an outside table and puts a burger in front of me and says, “tonight’s going to be wild, so tell me now if you want out”. Of course, I told him I didn’t, and he grinned and started buzzing in his seat --you know how he did that, like bouncing his knee but times one hundred-- and went “one day we’re going to leave this all behind.”

Silence falls over the group, and then Jay, very quietly, says, “What?”

“I thought he meant… I don’t know, maybe I didn’t want to think about what he meant at all.” Tim swallows thickly. “His dream, I think, was for the four of us to just… go. Maybe not forever, but for a while. Travel the world without weapons at our hips and our senses on high alert.”

Cassie nods, “He used to talk about “The Trip”, some fantasy scenario where we all left together.”

Tim spares a glance at Bruce, who’s looking at him with confliction written across his face. He smiles tightly, “I’m sorry you never got to go.”

“It was always one day,” Tim says, “One day, just not to today.”

“After this mission, after this report, after this crisis,” Cassie adds. “Someday soon, just not now. Always “not now”, until not now was too late.”

“How does the story end?” Joan asks roughly.

“Happy,” Tim tells her. “We had fun, we were stupid, we acted like kids. We were happy.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“I don’t know about the other stuff,” Cassie says softly, “but we were happy.”

The circle goes quiet, and then Jay sniffs, shifting on his feet. “Well, I think we’ll give you kids some time, as long as you need.”

“Our old bones aren’t meant for the rainy season,” Joan explains.

Cassie, always the best of them, nods. “You go. We’ll be okay. Thanks again.”

Wally drops a hand on each of their shoulders, bending over slightly to smile at them. “I don’t think I said it enough, but thanks. For looking out for him.”

Tim wants to protest, to say that they didn’t, that he died and they weren’t there. Except every time Bart would show up in his room at odd hours of the night, out of breath and in need of a hug, every time Tim would take him out to lunch just to try to get a read on him, every time Cassie called him, asking him if he’d heard from Bart lately, every time him and Kon would go riding around on the supercycle, looking for their friend, every time they  _ were _ there, they were looking out for him.

“Of course,” Tim says, “it was Bart.”

The implication is clear, and Cassie nods in agreement.

It was Bart, and Bart was family, and like that cheesy Lilo and Stitch quote that Kon used to say far too often, no one gets left behind.

“Tell your brother he can stop leaving me cryptid worried voicemails and just come over,” Wally tells Tim, rolling his eyes. Then he turns to wrap an arm around Joan and Jay’s back, and they all start to shuffle back to their cars, Iris on Joan’s other side, talking softly.

Barry pauses on his way to catch up to Iris, looking over Tim and Cassie. “You will, you know.”

The two of them exchange a look. Tim frowns, “Sorry?”

“Be okay. You will. It’ll just--” He stops, biting his lip. Tim realizes then that he’s never actually seen the Flash break down.

Bruce wraps an arm around his shoulders and slowly starts to lead him away. His voice is soft when he says, “I have you, old friend.”

He looks over his shoulder at Tim, and they communicate through raised eyebrows. Tim nods. He’ll wait at the car.

He feels, vaguely, that he should say something to Cassie. He desperately wants to see her smile. He stays quiet, everything he wants to tell her either isn’t something about Bart, or is, but should have been said to his face, not his grave.

“Max,” Cassie breathes into the silence.

Tim looks at her with furrowed eyebrows, but she’s already pointing at the grave next to Bart’s, the name Max Mercury carved into the stone. He was buried next to his mentor, then. Tim thinks he would have liked that. He looked up to Max in the way Tim has always looked up to Bruce, and he deserves to be beside him for… well, forever, he supposes.

There’s a fresh bouquet of flowers sitting on the grass in front of Max’s stone, and propped on the ground is a small Flash stuffy, worn from weather and time. 

“Didn’t Bart win that at a fair?” He asks. Cassie just stares. Slowly, she lowers to her knees, the wet grass squelching beneath her. She keeps looking between the graves, like she’s made a connection. Tim isn’t sure he wants to know what it is. “Cassie?”

“I think that after Max died--” Cassie stops, composing herself, “I think he started to unravel. And we-- we weren’t really there for him.”

Tim feels a pinprick of defense, swimming in the sea of guilt. He knows it’s a coping mechanism. He opens his mouth anyway. “We’re heroes, our lives are insane. We can’t blame ourselves for that.”

Cassie laughs, shuddering and almost mocking in a way that makes Tim’s chest rattle. “Yeah? Because all I know is the last time we talked was six months ago, and now I’m sitting at his grave.”

“Six?”

“What was it for you?”

“Eleven.”

Cassie looks up at him, but she doesn’t say anything about it, except, “Oh.”

Once again, Tim wants to defend himself. This time he doesn’t. The only ground he has to stand on is his friend's grave.

“Tim?” Cassie asks suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“We’re good, right?” Cassie turns to him, and she looks tired, “Good heroes?”

Tim sits down next to her, folding his legs under him. “I think so. We’re trying our best.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Cassie?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re good friends, right?”

“Ask me that when we’re not at one of their funerals.”

“That’s fair,” Tim whispers. He tips to the side, and when his head hits Cassie’s shoulder she just scoots closer, tucking her hands between her knees against the cold.

The wet underneath them seeps into Tim’s suit, mud sticking to and dragging at the bottoms of his jacket. He’ll have to get it dry cleaned if he wants to use it again.

He makes a mental note to throw it away as soon as he gets home.

Glancing behind him, Tim can only see two occupied cars now, Bruce’s and Barry’s. He can see the faint outline of Iris, sitting in the driver's seat alone. Barry must be in Bruce’s car. He thinks about the look on his dad’s face, at Kon’s funeral when he went inside to talk to Clark. A sick part of him wants to know just how many funerals he’s been to to get so good at it, but most of him is just glad he’s here. In close proximity, at least.

His eyes travel back to Max’s grave, and something in him twists.

They didn’t go to that funeral, but Bart did.

He’d showed up the next day, eyes tired and shoulders slumped. It took Kon all of two seconds to put the pieces together, and less than that to wrap him in a hug. It’s the first and only time Tim ever called Batman to pull Young Justice out of a mission.

They just sat in a circle on the floor all day, and for once, no one said a word.

Bart even apologized the next morning. Tim had pulled him into an embrace and told him to stop being stupid.

“Family isn’t something to apologize for.”

Cassie looks at him sharply, “What?”

“Just something I told Bart after Max died.”

“Tim…” Cassie smiles, part sad and part amused and part something else entirely, “Bart used to say that to us all the time. Like, constantly.”

It takes Tim a few seconds to process that, and then he laughs too. “Of course he did.”

“I think he did that a lot, pocketed things we said to him and turned them into his motto.”

“Like  _ we’re _ the pinnacle of wisdom.”

“I don’t think he cared about that.”

Tim hums, “I think he just cared.”

“He  _ loved _ us, you know?” Cassie pauses, lifting her hands and then dropping them again, “I mean, we loved him, of course we did, but Bart...“

“Something about being all he had, right?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Was it our fault?”

“What do you mean?”

“He never really spent time with anyone else,” Tim says. “Especially after Max died. I think he spent more time crashing at our houses than he did at the Garrick’s.”

Cassie reaches out to brush her fingers over Bart’s name gently. “If we were all he thought he needed, then he was right.”

“He  _ really _ loved us, huh?”

“Yeah,” Cassie says. “He really did.”

In the distance, thunder rumbles.

It doesn’t rain.

Some childish part of him thinks that Bart’s grave shouldn’t be so quiet. That there should be birds or music or so many bouquets of flowers it’s hard to see his name. Bart didn’t live quietly, and Tim is sure he didn’t die that way, that it would change now just feels wrong.

He goes to tell Cassie so when she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a damp paper towel. She unwraps in gingerly, lifting a single rose cutting from it. She presses it into the dirt beside the corner of the stone and buries it gently, packing down the moist soil around the bottom of the stem.

“What’s that for?”

“Store bought bouquets are temporary,” Cassie says. “But maybe we can grow roses here, and they’ll keep.”

“We’ll have to tend them.”

Cassie nods, a smile tugging at her lips. “Then they’ll keep.”

Tim reaches out to pat the dirt for good measure, nodding with finality. He wasn’t there that day, but he can be here now, for a rose.

“Do we know what he…” Tim starts, trailing off. He wasn’t there, the moment Kon died, but Cassie told him through tears an hour after that she’d told him he saved them all. His last words were on brand, a “that’s cool” after being informed he saved everyone he ever loved. She’d watched the light go out of his eyes, and as much as Tim hates the thought of it, he wonders if the nightmares would be better if he had, too.

“Val doesn’t talk about it,” Cassie says, “but he apologized to Wally, I know that much.”

“Of course he did.”

“Hey, you remember that game we used to play? The one where Kon or I would guess how far into open air Bart could run before gravity caught up, and we’d float out to it, and he’d try to run off a building into our arms?”

“You mean the game that gave me gray hairs at the ripe age of fourteen?”

“You were just jealous because you’re the only one who can’t float midair,” Cassie says, elbowing him.

Tim snorts, linking her arm with his. “What did he always say? Before he started running?”

“He’d say, “promise to catch me if I fall?”.”

“And you guys would say--”

“Always.” Cassie giggles, and then sniffs. “We never did it, you know.”

“Did what?”

“Went home.” She pulls a chain around her neck, untucking it from her shirt. Tim stares at the key dangling at the end. “We said we’d go with Bart.”

“We were--” Tim stops. They were what? Busy? Not once in an entire year could they find the time to go back to their old headquarters? Not even for a day? He closes his eyes. “I broke my promise.”

“We all did,” Cassie says. “We promised we’d never lose each other.”

“We did, didn’t we?”

Tim remembers that. The night Bart and him came back to the team. They’d even called Cissie, made her take a taxi all the way up to see them, just so they could sit in a circle and hold each others hands and promise that no matter how much time passed, or what team they joined, or how far apart they were, they would never stop being close.

“I know the sun was for Kon,” Cassie says, “but today, I wish it would rain.”

Tim agrees. He pulls his knees up to his chest, not even attempting to protect his suit against the mud and wet. “When was the last time you talked to Cissie or Anita?”

“Cissie and I called last night, before that it had been months. Anita sends me memes all the time, but if we’re talking structured conversations? Kon’s funeral.”

Tim starts, turning to her. “They were there?”

“Of course they were, it was Kon.” Cassie pats his knee softly. “Tim, you didn’t talk to anyone that day, not unless they approached you. I think the others were just…”

“Grieving and didn’t have time for stubborn old me?” Tim asks with a wry smile.

Cassie shoves him. “No. Anita wanted to give you space, and Cissie is the stubborn one, she wanted you to say something first. Then we had to leave, and that was it.”

That was it. 

“Greta?”

“God, years. She only really stayed in touch with you and Bart. You?”

“Cissie was… just after Bart died. I called her, I’m not even sure why, and we sort of just sat there. It’s not often you’re there when Cissie cries.” Tim shrugs, “Anita sends me videos of the babies, I send her videos of Damian trying to kill people, it works out. Greta drops by the manor occasionally to check up on me, but she usually just stands a few yards away and doesn’t say anything.”

“Ghost habits die hard,” Cassie says.

Tim snorts, “Guess so.”

The rose sapling waves a little in the wind, Tim reaches out to steady it, tracing a finger over a leaf. Is that all that’s left for all of them once they die? A grave and a few possessions and a rose bush if your friends are guilty enough to plant it? Tim supposes they have memories, too, but he knows without videos and pictures, those along with voices and faces would fade too. Kon’s shirts barely even smell like him anymore.

Cassie, suddenly, inhales sharply. “Bart is dead, Tim.”

“Yeah,” Tim says lamely. Something shudders through him, then, rocking into his core. His eyes sting like they’ve been open for a week and his breath comes out choked. “Bart’s dead.”

There was never a doubt, from the time they knew each other to now, that Bart was it. Bart was the personification of the reason Tim does this. No matter how much he’d seen or how much he’d been through, he never stopped being loud and optimistic and kind. They could blame it on his upbringing, virtual reality and video games desensitizing him to every bad thing but that doesn’t work for everything.

Because a desensitized kid wouldn’t try and adopt every stray animal he came across. He wouldn’t cry every time he watched Lilo and Stitch. He wouldn’t love his friends so much Tim could see it in his eyes whenever they were together.

Bart cared so much, despite everything, and Tim envied him for it, but more importantly, he adores him for it.

Now Bart is dead, and all that care he held inside him is gone.

“I should probably head home. It’ll be dark soon,” Cassie says, and her voice breaks.

“You don’t have to,” Tim tells her, “we can drive you home if you’re worried. Or you could… stay over?”

Cassie tilts her head as she looks at him, raising an eyebrow. “Are you propositioning me, Mr. Drake-Wayne?”

“Christ, Cassie,” Tim laughs, and there’s tears on both their faces. They both go to wipe them from each other's cheeks at the same time, and dissolve into another fit of giggles because of it. 

Cassie stands, hauling Tim up with her with barely any effort. “Come on, Boy Wonder. Lets go cry in your mansion.”

Tim snorts, leaning into her. They pause before they head up the hill though, giving Bart’s grave one last look. Tim presses his fingers to his lips, then the stone. “I love you, Imp.”

“Love you,” Cassie echoes, actually leaning down to kiss the stone itself, which Tim thinks is pretty unsanitary, but he doesn’t say anything. She stands and wraps an arm around him, squeezing tightly. “I’ll be back in a few days, don’t let that rose fall down.”

She starts to turn, but Tim stalls, staring at Bart’s name, probabilities running through his mind. He swallows, turning to Cassie with a wide eyed look. “I think I could bring them back, you know.”

“Think, or hope?” 

“Does it matter?”

“Hope is a dangerous thing, Tim,” Cassie says sadly, “it gives you something out of nothing.”

The sky rumbles again, closer this time. Tim says nothing as he lets her drag him away.

Tim didn’t bring an umbrella, he hadn’t thought about it. But not a drop of rain hits the ground until they’re climbing into the car with the doors shut and Bruce is asking gently how it went. 

“It was sad,” Cassie says. “And we’re all muddy.”

“Wouldn’t be Bart without a mess.”

“Thank god for that.”

The cemetery fades out of view behind them, and Tim watches it long after it’s gone. 

The rain dribbles down the windshield like tears.


End file.
